In a beach bar downtown/ anarcho-judeo christian stereotypes are being poured into the neck of a Corona bottle/ & shot to the back of a closed throat/ with lightning speed/ PowerAde is soon marketed as/ “LIQUID POLITICAL STRATEGY”/ & sales shoot through the roof of sanity/ while the freaks run for cover inside bodegas & communes/ Jameson whiskey tanks when the tools join the Independent party/ & elect Sarah Palin’s unkempt embryonic sac as their delegate for the next presidential election/ which has been postponed until the real New Year Baby breeches/

Back at the bar/ they’ve started to wisen up to the “dealings and the stealings hermano…”/ “Tu estás living far beyond your means”/

one says to me/ & does a complete & sober swan-dive into himself/ immediately violating the new ordinance in due process/ El Jefe is asking an adopted citizen to sign on the dotted line between freedom & personal gain/ It has a stuffy one bedroom over a hole in the wall down by the docks/ where it keeps the thrills of an unchecked aggression tied in the closet/ on a vintage murder dog collar/ Sometimes you can swear it’s one of those gimmick invisible collars available for purchase at the shop on 19th & Sunny/ Somewhere, a rogue spirit/ a wild ace tucked too far back in the sleeve of things/ is sitting in a quiet room/ with crumpled jeans & old lighters/ mismatched shoes, fading time, faulty sockets, measuring tape, a badge, old beaten leather computer chairs & only three wheels/

Stale smoke from a filled ashtray/ open poetry books & old boxers/ antibiotic cream, broadsides & toy six shooters with no ammunition/ preparing to go off into the mundane/

* * *

Frankie Metro is the Head Non-Fiction and Associate Fiction editor at Red Fez Publications, where his column “The Left Handed Smoker” runs monthy. He is also The Chemist at the online lit journal The Meth Lab and holds no affiliation with Black Bloc Anarchists.

“Streets of the Pan Americano Nightmare III” comes from The Anarchist’s Blac Book of Poetry by Frankie Metro, published 6/12/2012 by Crisis Chronicles Press. To order, send $7 US to 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, OH 44111.